by CD Reiss
My mother had blown about three quarters of a million dollars traveling the globe.
The house I lived in had been purchased for ninety-five thousand in the mid-nineties and paid in full twenty years later with my dad’s life insurance. But Echo Park had been in the nascent stages of a renaissance when my parents bought it. Since then, more and more people like Dr. Thorensen had moved in next to artists, Hispanic families, and gang members.
According to a bank located in Colorado, my little house on a hill was worth six hundred fifty thousand dollars. I knew that because my mother had cashed out every dime, and then some, piggy-backing mortgages and loans. She’d attempted to squeeze almost another hundred grand in equity out of the thing when I’d had those permits opened. As if there would be actual improvements.
She’d bailed on her job in February. She’d been at that church since I was in high school and had a salary good enough to cover all her obligations. Without that job, it had all tumbled on her. I imagined the gentleman in question was the cause of her slide.
“You’re a goddamn genius, ma.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“You know you’ll never pay this back?”
“They won’t miss it. It’s a bank,” she said.
“It’s about four banks. Mom, Christ—”
“Mouth.”
“I can’t even get my head around what to do.” I collected the papers. I wanted to slam and bang them to illustrate my annoyance, but they only made shuffling sounds. “Can you just tell me what happened? You didn’t raise me to do stuff like this.”
She put her fists on her hips. “Like what?”
“Stealing. This is stealing.”
“Not if I let them have that house.”
“It’s not worth seven hundred thousand dollars.”
“The appraisers said it was, so it is. Things are worth what experts say they’re worth. People like us, we’re nothing. Our opinions don’t mean anything. And you agree. In your heart, you know it. You think the house isn’t worth anything because you love it, and if you love it, it’s garbage, right? Well, how much would you pay for it? Huh? How much for your father’s trees? How much for the porch your father and I sat on after you were in bed?”
“Mom—”
“How much for the kitchen where I cooked for you? How much for the side door you snuck into after curfew as if I didn’t know? Or the bathroom where I miscarried two babies? How much is it worth, Monya? Even that cracked foundation your father promised to fix a hundred times before he shipped himself across the world. That house was where I waited for him. Where he wasn’t when I found out I had cancer. How much would a stranger pay for those years? If my life there wasn’t worth seven hundred thousand dollars, what was my life worth?”
I couldn’t take it any more. Her face was red and strained. Her voice hit a crescendo, and I had been a neglectful, insolent bitch. I bolted from the chair, put my arms around her, and let her cry. “It’s okay, ma. We’ll fix it.”
“I can’t. I tried everything.”
“I have friends who are lawyers. I can—” I stopped myself. I could have them look at the paperwork, maybe explain the situation. But Jonathan would offer to buy the house, no doubt, and I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to go down a road where he bailed out my family, then my friends. I didn’t want him to trade Jessica’s financial distress for mine. I could soothe my mother for the moment, but in the end, we’d have to let the house go. I’d tell Jonathan I was okay with it, pretend as though it wasn’t a big deal.
A call came in. Still holding my mother, I slipped the phone out of my pocket. Margie. I missed it by a second and put it back in my pocket while it went to voice mail. “Let me see what I can do.”
She sniffed and stood up straight. “There’s nothing to do. I’m sorry you have to move.”
“I’ll live.” I waved it off, but I knew I wasn’t convincing. “I should have been here for you. Come around more often.”
“Yes. You should have.”
“I’m sorry.” A text blooped on my phone. My mother and I looked at each other.
“This the man with the car?” Her tone did not bode well for an intelligent conversation. If I had just learned to stop calling myself a whore, my mother hadn’t. She was in park, but that could change on a dime.
“No, it’s his sister, probably.” I looked. It was a text from Margie, as I expected.
—Where the fuck are you?—
The next one came immediately after.
—He’s bleeding into his chest.
Bad suture ripped tissue—
It took me sixty seconds to say good-bye to my mother, promise I’d do my best for her, scoop up the papers, and get in the car.
Chapter 15
MONICA
I texted Margie that I’d be there in two hours. It was getting dark already, and I’d hit Los Angeles right around rush hour. That would literally double the time it would take me to get to Sequoia. The hospital was inside a knot of traffic arteries that made it hard to move toward or away from during peak hours. It was poor planning for the sake of the ambulances and women in labor, but for a central, urban hospital accessible from the five points of L.A., it was prime real estate.
Jonathan was in the middle of the best cardiac unit in the country, if the internet was to be believed. Whatever happened, I was sure it would be rectified in no time at all. I worried that he might face unpleasantness and that I wouldn’t be there for him, but he’d be fine. I was sure, positive as a matter of fact, that it wasn’t a big deal.
I finally got into the waiting room at seven p.m. and was redirected to intensive care. I didn’t shake, nor did I panic, because in ten years, the visit would be funny. When I got to intensive care, it didn’t look as though anyone was laughing.
Fiona blew past me without greeting. Deirdre smiled at me, but she couldn’t hide her concern like the rest of them. Sheila, who always came off as motherly and kind, was talking to Margie as if she wanted to bite off her head. Doing my own roll call, I counted off. Carrie wasn’t coming. Leanne was in Asia. Theresa hadn’t been around in days. Eileen stood by Margie, twisting her diamond ring. Her pumps had been traded for sneakers days ago when her medication was upped. She waved to me but didn’t call me over. Margie’s presence made me bold. I walked forward.
“This is unacceptable.” Sheila spoke in clipped vowels and hard consonants, her finger pointed at Margie’s throat. “And you treat it like another day in the park. This hospital fucked up. They as good as killed him.”
I gasped, and the three of them paused, glanced, ignored.
“Thanks for the drama,” Margie said to Sheila. “It’s exactly what we need.”
“You need to start filing a malpractice suit immediately.”
“Like hell.”
“You’re losing your guts.”
“I want us focusing on Jonathan. Not legal battles. Let them do an inquiry—” Margie said.
“And start the cover-up.”
“This is not TV—”
“I’ll hire my own counsel.”
“Exactly what he needs.”
“You—”
“I agree with Margie,” I said. Six light eyes turned toward me, and I got my first ever case of stage fright. “It’s going to take years to sue. A week won’t make a difference.”
Sheila turned her head but didn’t commit the rest of her body to face me. She’d been kind to me from the minute I met her, but I had the feeling that was about to change. “Who are you?” She knew goddamn well who I was. Nobody.
I walked away and wasn’t followed. Good. Fucking Drazens, all of them. Except the one. I didn’t know the nurses in the ICU, so I put a harmless look on my face as I approached the dark-skinned woman with an armful of charts. “Hi, I’m looking for Jonathan Drazen’s room?”
“He’s down in X-ray. Come back in an hour.”
I had two choices: Go back and try to find out what I needed from the Family Drazen or w
ait in the cafeteria until Jonathan came back. I knew Margie would tell me everything once she shook Sheila, and Sheila might even calm down enough to be nice to me. But I saw no reason to stand there and be abused while I waited.
As I walked into the cafeteria, I saw Daddy Drazen sitting with a long-haired man in sandals who had a toddler on his knee. The man was talking fast with his head down. Declan leaned in to hear and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. Declan didn’t seem like a sociopath, which didn’t mean much of anything. I wasn’t an expert on either Declan or abnormal psychology.
I got in line for a cup of tea. A song percolated in my head. I went to get my notebook, but dig as I might, it wasn’t in my bag. I must have left it at home. Damn it. I took out a Sharpie and got ready to write it on my arm.
“Monica?”
I heard my name as I spaced out to the music in my head, trying to get words and rhythm to match. “Dr. Thorensen. I mean, Brad. Hi.” He had a white lab coat over his suit with a nametag clipped to the lapel. “I’ve never seen you at work before.”
“What are you doing down here?”
“Getting something to eat. I just got in.” He took me by the elbow and sat me down at an empty table. “What?”
“I just had to open a transplant assessment of Mr. Drazen.”
I don’t know what I must have looked like. Maybe blank, because a sort of vacuity took hold of me. Or maybe I looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. It was a bad suture. I know Sheila’s pissed, but…” But I’d assumed she was flying off the handle. But I thought he got X-rays all the time. But I thought it was a complication, not ruination. But I was hanging on to my optimism because I missed it.
He glanced around then back at me.
“Say it,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it from anyone else.”
“It was a suture inside his heart. The tearing’s very bad. He’s bleeding faster than they can pump it out. If they go in and patch him up... Well, they can’t. There’s no room. And the tear has moved into his left ventricle.”
“Are you going to fix it?” I panicked the panic of someone whose anxiety was a show because I knew everything would be okay. For sure, there was an easy fix for all this, and Jonathan and I would soon laugh about how silly I was to worry so much. I couldn’t wait for that laughter. I told the story in my head over an imaginary Thanksgiving dinner, describing the goose bumps on my arms, the dry feeling in my mouth, the sudden breathlessness in my lungs. I’d wax dramatic about holding back tears, and Jonathan would laugh that laugh from deep in his chest, and tears would stream down his face.
“I don’t know,” Brad said.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“We’re still doing the assessment. I have a lot of forms to fill out. I have to talk to the rest of the cardiac team. It’s tricky.”
“What’s fucking tricky? You’re either fixing it, or you’re filling out fucking paperwork.”
“Take it easy.”
“I’m not taking it easy. I will burn your fucking house down if you don’t tell me right now why you assholes can’t fix it immediately.”
He took my wrists and held me in place. I knew he wouldn’t have done that unless he knew me. The privilege of whatever information I’d already gotten was courtesy of a few hours of City of Dis. “There’s a good chance, and I don’t know for sure because I need to review everything with the committee, but I’m pretty sure he’ll need a transplant.”
“Okay.” I breathed, which I’d forgotten to do. That was a thing. It was a course of action. “Then give him one.”
“We need a heart, and his blood type? AB negative? It’s rare. He needs to get on the list. Monica, I hope I’m wrong. If the surgical team believes they can go back in and fix it, then this whole conversation is moot.” His eyes, deep blue and a little bloodshot, as if he’d been up too many hours, did not waver from mine. He had the confidence of a man who had held a human heart and made it beat again. He had made life and death happen, and Jonathan was just another patient, another puzzle to solve, another career challenge.
I slipped my hands down to hold his hands. I squeezed them and closed my eyes. “I want you to understand something. That man? He’s not some boyfriend in a line of them. He is my alpha and omega. He is the sky over me. Without him, I’m lost. There’s no one else, no one whose soul balances mine the way his does. I’ve waited my life for him, and when he came, I didn’t recognize him. Not until recently. If I lose him, I swear, as God is my witness, I will be alone. No man can match him.”
When I opened my eyes, Brad was looking at our clasped hands, head down. “I didn’t know.”
“I only live next door.”
He looked back up. “I’ll do my best. I can’t promise anything. If he needs a new heart, I want you to be ready for a rough time. He doesn’t have forever to bleed into himself, and healthy hearts don’t come all that often. You need to sleep and eat and live your life while you wait.”
I smirked. “My life is with him. That’s how I live it. The rest is unnecessary complication.” I felt like Jonathan was there with me when I quoted him. We sat like that for a few seconds, and I tried to transmit my seriousness. It felt good to just sit with someone and be, even if it couldn’t last.
His cell phone beeped. He didn’t look at it but let go of my hands. “That’s my office. I have to go.”
“Will you let me know?”
“You’ll know, Monica. You’ll know.” He stood. “Just the sleeping and eating. Do those. Okay?”
My tea was cold. My granola bar looked more and more like a slab of pressed shit. “After I see him. Then I’ll go home and go to bed.”
He looked at his watch. “Come with me. Hurry.” He waved and walked off, hand in his pocket for his phone before he’d even turned around completely. I scuttled behind.
Examination rooms inside offices inside suites inside wards, around corners and up secret stairs, I followed Brad to X-ray. While texting, he spoke to a lady in a pink smock, and Pink Smock gave him the name of yet another space I never would have found on my own. In that space was a gurney. On it was Jonathan.
I assumed Brad said good-bye, because by the time I was standing over my lover, Brad was gone. Jonathan was either sleeping or unconscious, pale as death, an altar to IV tower gods. I took his hand, pressing my palm to his. He didn’t respond. It was just warm enough to indicate he wasn’t lost. I stayed until Pink Smock and an orderly came to push him away. I went with them, just to make sure he was okay.
Chapter 16
MONICA
I slept in a random waiting room despite promising Brad I’d go home. I woke up aching everywhere, went to the cafeteria, and wrote a song on a napkin. Something moved on the table. I snapped out of it. My notebook, with the NOPA inside, slid toward me. Declan stood over the table.
“I thought you might want this,” he said. “You left it here the other day.”
“Thanks.” I stuffed it in my bag. “You’re like a regular here these days. Piece of furniture.”
“Like fiberglass and cheap chrome?”
“The Drazen sense of humor is genetic, apparently.”
He sat down. “Not so apparent. I haven’t heard my boy crack a joke in twenty years.”
“He’s funny.” My voice cracked. I put my head down. I couldn’t look at him because I had been about to say “he was funny.” My eyes stung, and my face got red. I didn’t want a man made of fiberglass and chrome to see me cry over his prodigal son.
“Margaret told me,” he said.
I sniffed and tried to get my shit together. I clutched my tea, letting it heat up my icy hands. “Why aren’t you ever upstairs with them?”
“This is as close as I’m allowed. They don’t want me there. My wife, at least. We sleep on opposite sides of the house. Decades of neglect will do that.”
“I’m sure it was purely benign.” My raw emotions made my feelings hard to hide, and in that unguarded moment, my voice dripped with inappropri
ately rude sarcasm. I wasn’t being a woman of grace.
But he seemed to take it in stride. “I had a very, shall we say, intense mid-life crisis.”
“You shared a mistress with your son. Pretty intense.”
“Is that what he told you? I guess he could have seen it that way. She was a manipulative girl, but yes, I did plenty I was pleased with at the time, but now... Well, now I need a golf cart to get to my wife’s bedroom and my son won’t see me.” He massaged his coffee. “Would he be upset if he knew you were at a table with me?”
“Yeah.” I felt guilty for being there. Jonathan wouldn’t like it. Not one bit. If he was going to get well, he needed to know I was safe, and I was sure he didn’t think of me as safe around his father. I put the granola bar in my bag. “I should go upstairs. It was nice talking to you.”
“Yes, it was.”
Chapter 17
JONATHAN
I’d already tried to take the fucking little tubes out of my fucking nose. The room lit up like Griffith Park at Christmas, and it was Jingle Bells all over again. I’d be okay with it if I never got defibrillated again. Odds were not in my favor.
I had a hard time staying awake for long. My exhaustion came from lack of oxygen and a body worn out working for nothing. It pumped blood that went down a tube and sucked up more blood from a bag. There was medicine too. Bags of it going into my hand. And a bag of blood that kept getting replaced like a pot of coffee.
I remember one of them saying I was a lucky man. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I thought it didn’t have a damn thing to do with my health. He was blond, Nordic looking, and I asked him what he meant. He just went on with another battery of questions that seemed like every other battery of questions every other white lab coat had asked me or the person next to them. If I had a dime for every doctor who walked in and talked about me as if I wasn’t there, I could buy and sell myself. The non-entity of me. The skin bag of pain and discomfort. I didn’t feel as though I owned my body any more. I felt like a piece of meat being kept alive until something happened. Some miracle. Or some news.